In addition to robust and reliable voice services, mobile device consumers often demand mobile access to real-time multimedia and entertainment content, such a news broadcasts, weather forecasts, sports clips, stock quotes, etc. To meet this increasing consumer demand, various technologies have been developed to provide such content to mobile devices. For example, DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcasting-Handheld), DMB (Digital Multimedia Broadcasting), and MediaFLO™ facilitate mobile reception of multimedia and entertainment content.
Mobile devices that receive real-time multimedia content must be able to receive, process, and properly display such content to users. Existing technologies for receiving and displaying such content on mobile devices, however, are deficient in several aspects. In particular, existing technologies are deficient in their ability to properly display scrolling text during a real-time video broadcast, such as the ticker (or text crawl) accompanying CNN's Headline News.
Displaying such scrolling text on mobile devices usually involves scrolling the text during a video presentation. While adequate for normal television viewing on relatively large screens, problems with readability occur when those or similar videos are presented on smaller, mobile devices. The low frame rate of scrolling text presentations exacerbate the problem, often making the text appear erratic and lowering the overall quality of the viewing experience. FIGS. 1A-1C illustrate typical mobile video displays with scrolling text. FIG. 1A illustrates a screen shot 100 of a typical QCIF (Quarter Common Intermediate Format) mobile video display with scrolling text 105. FIG. 1B illustrates a screen shot 110 representative of a typical QVGA (Quarter-VGA) mobile video display with scrolling text 115. FIG. 1C illustrates a screen shot 120 of QCIF video enlarged to QVGA, which is typical of viewing mobile video in a full screen mode. As illustrated, there are readability problems even when scrolling text is enlarged to QVGA.
Some attempts have been made to improve readability of text on mobile device by increasing the text font. These attempts, however, are usually restricted to static text feed with a video signal. In addition, these attempts are typically limited to pre-recorded video and not real-time broadcasts.